A federal jury on Monday ruled in favor of Officer Dennis Hutchins of the Little Rock Police Department, rejecting a wrongful death claim brought by the family of a man Hutchins shot and killed almost five years ago. Shortly after…
August 18, 2021
by Benjamin Hardy
Update, Aug. 19, 2021: On Monday, the jury in Officer Dennis Hutchins' civil trial delivered a verdict in favor of Hutchins. Vanessa Cole remembers her older brother Roy Lee Richards Jr. as the storyteller of their tight-knit Central Arkansas family.…
August 8, 2021
by Olivia Paschal
On May 18, the Little Rock Board of Directors approved a city ordinance that designated misdemeanor marijuana offenses the lowest priority for law enforcement. At the meeting, Little Rock Police Chief Keith Humphrey told the city board that the…
June 18, 2021
by Benjamin Hardy and Jennifer Lenow
Though the number of recorded marijuana offenses in Arkansas declined modestly from 2018 to 2019, arrests remain far higher than they were a decade ago. A bill in the state legislature aims to change that.
March 11, 2021
by Griffin Coop
More than 87,000 Arkansans with felony convictions are barred from registering to vote, according to a recent report from The Sentencing Project. Most of those people are not currently incarcerated.
November 2, 2020
by Griffin Coop
Evictions in Arkansas can snowball from criminal charges to arrests to jail time because of a 119-year-old law that mostly impacts female, Black and low-income renters. Even prosecutors have called it unconstitutional.
October 26, 2020
by Maya Miller, Ellis Simani and Benjamin Hardy
Across the state, from Bentonville to Crossett, thousands of Arkansans have taken to the streets in support of the Black Lives Matter movement and to protest police brutality. Some are seasoned organizers. Some are first-time protesters. Some have served on task forces, met with elected leaders, received death threats. They are racially diverse, and they span generations. And they have decided, despite a pandemic that put them at risk when gathering, to keep coming out. Here are a few of their stories.
June 19, 2020
by Anita Badejo, Delilah Pope, Stephanie Smittle, Frederick McKindra, KaToya Ellis Fleming, Heath Carpenter, Micah Fields and Lindsey Millar
Inmates at Arkansas's Cummins Unit say guards treated them like “lepers” as COVID-19 tore through the penitentiary.
June 18, 2020
by Molly Minta
From March 17 to April 17, the Garland County District Court issued 2,376 warrants for failure to pay fines and fees, according to the state Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC). The number of warrants in Garland County far outpaces those issued by other counties in the same time period: Crittenden County issued 48 warrants on the West Memphis docket, and Pulaski County issued 62 on the Little Rock docket.
April 28, 2020
by Molly Minta
But the state may be losing patience with the county.
February 4, 2019
by Benjamin Hardy and Carla Bourke